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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #21
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 21
Episode: Ragtag
Original Airdate: 5-6-14
Gearing up to the season finale next week and the show decides to actually slow things down a little bit and take a look into Ward’s past and his relationship with Garrett. While I didn’t really care too much for almost any of the flashback scenes, there were still enough fun to be had in Coulson’s team and with Rayna to keep me interested in this episode throughout and from the look of things, it has the season finale ready to go out with a big bang even if it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be making the gravitron callback this season, instead saving it for a second season which is still up in the air as far as I can tell.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #20
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 20
Episode: Nothing Personal
Original Airdate: 4-29-14
Ran a little late on this episode’s roundup because I didn’t have internet until the other day, but I’m mostly moved in now and back into the swing of things so I am ready to get back into the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its run up to the season finale. Things are getting much more complicated with Ward’s alignment change, the dissolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization and the entire disruption of Coulson’s team. Agent Triplett is starting to fit in a little bit more, but things are also not going quite so well between the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the US government. And on top of everything else, Deathlok makes another appearance and so does Maria Hill.
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Snowpiercer
Snowpiercer 2014
It’s always weird to me the way that some movies are released. This is a Korean film filled with mostly American and British actors and filmed in English with the exception of a couple characters, and it’s based off of a French graphic novel. It’s a sci-fi movie set in a dystopian future. It was completed and released in Korea last year. And yet it still hasn’t gotten a US release date until June, of course this was partly due to the conflict between the director Bong Joon-ho and the distributer Harvey Weinstein who wanted to cut about 30 minutes from the movie to make it a more action-heavy movie, cutting out much of the character development. In a time when it feels like two hours is the standard movie runtime and many movies run two and a half to almost three hours, this does not seem like an over-long movie at all. On top of that, I really loved this movie; the action, the characters, and especially the sci-fi concepts behind it. It’s the best sci-fi movie that I have seen in quite a while even though it’s grounded in mostly current technology.
Son of Batman
Son of Batman 2014
It’s time for yet another entry from DC Animation which almost always produce some of my favorite animated superheroes. This time around it’s a story that I wasn’t familiar with at all, which as the title suggests is about the son of Batman. If you’ve seen Dark Knight Rises, or are familiar with what’s happened in the comic books it’s not a big surprise that Batman hooks up with Talia Al Ghul who isn’t always as cutthroat as her father from what I understand. There’s also apparently some deal with how the kid is born in the first place in the comics but it’s mostly glossed over in this movie. Anyway, the League of Shadows is in trouble so Talia takes her son Damian to meet his heretofore unknown father who just so happens to be Batman for a little father and son bonding time. Of course, being raised within the League of Shadows isn’t without its downfalls and there’s also the matter at hand where Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke has killed Ra’s Al Ghul and Damian is looking for revenge and is not above killing, which obviously doesn’t sit well with Batman. Anyway it’s a fun movie and continues a similar look from Justice League: War and also a similar mix of blood and occasional humor which I enjoyed as usual.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #19
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 19
episode: Light in the Darkness
original airdate: 4-22-14
Quick recap: The cat’s out of the bag, Hydra’s out in the open and Agent Ward is in with them, but the rest of the team doesn’t know it yet. S.H.I.E.L.D. is more or less dissolved except for a handful of scattered agents still loyal to Nick Fury and the ideals that he stands for. The Fridge has been opened and dozens of criminals both insane and superpowered have been released into the wild and Coulson’s team is one of the few groups out there willing and able to stop them. It’s almost an excuse to turn the show back into a freak of the week except instead of doing that, they tie the most wanted fugitive directly into the past of the show as someone that Coulson has dealt with in the past and it is finally a chance to meet the mysterious cellist that he has mentioned a few times. Meanwhile there are still trust issues within the team, not just towards Ward who the audience knows isn’t trustworthy, but also still between Fitz & Simmons, Coulson & May, and Trippett & Fitz. All in all it adds up to another great episode.
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The Return of Swamp Thing
The Return of Swamp Thing 1989
I knew very little about the first Swamp Thing movie, and I knew even less about the sequel which came out 7 years later and the only connection between the two movies are the actor that plays Swamp Thing in the suit and the villain Arcane who supposedly died in the first movie. I would have thought that they would have used the Dick Durock’s voice once again for the Swamp Thing, but for some reason* they chose to hire a voice actor do ADR all of his lines. The tone of this movie is also much more light and comedic. Unfortunately this makes the campy comedy feel much more forced than in the first movie where everyone was taking things seriously. There’s still some cheesy fun to be had, but it’s not nearly as good of a movie overall than the first one.
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Swamp Thing
Swamp Thing 1982
It’s been a while since I watched the Swamp Thing mirror from Marvel Man-Thing, and while they came out in comic book form near the same time, in the movie world Swamp Thing beat it by quite a wide margin. Not only that, but it was directed by horror master Wes Craven best known for the Nightmare on Elm Street series, and yet this is a far cry from a horror movie aside from the creature makeup. It’s rated PG for one thing though it does get away with the brief boob shot that happened once in a while back in the 80’s days of the PG rating. It’s a bit of a monster movie where the creature is a sympathetic/tragic hero, but there’s also a strong villain that he’s pitted against all the while he spends his time trying to protect an instant love-interest. Filled with a bit of cheese, but still a fun movie.
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Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1998
This is one of those movies that I’ve heard about since the start of this site, and not in a good way. This was a TV movie made for the Fox network starring Baywatch’s David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury and written by prolific superhero screenwriter David Goyer with as many hits to his name as misses. It has a very 90’s generic action feel to it with a ratio of pithy one-liners to actual action scenes at around 20:1. Everyone on screen really hams it up from the Hoff himself pretending to be the hardest hardass that ever lived, his ex-girlfriend Val who’s just as tough as he is, the over-confident fledgling British recruit, to the always-angry executive who thinks Nick Fury is the biggest mistake that S.H.I.E.L.D. Has ever made. And I haven’t even gotten to the villains yet! The special effects look 90’s TV cheap, the fights look like they were done by actors who have never taken a martial arts lesson in their lives, there is more talk about the threats than there is actual action against any threats, but as usual with these kinds of movies, there is plenty of laughable cheesiness to get some enjoyment out of watching this movie.
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TV Nights: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #18
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Week 18
Episode: Providence
Original Airdate: 4-15-14
I think it’s time for a quick recap, obviously spoilers if you haven’t caught up to this point in the show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues the course laid out by the events in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where the agency has crumbled due to a long-gestating Hydra infestation, but Coulson’s team is still intact for the most part. His trust in his longtime friend Melinda May has been dealt a blow after finding out that she had been reporting on their goings on to Nick Fury in secret, his trust in his other old friend and newcomer to the show Agent Garrett has been shattered after finding out he has been the Clairvoyant the entire time and is a high ranking member of Hydra, his trust in Agent Ward is in doubt as his loyalties are in question as he appears to be siding with his former SO Garrett, and finally his trust in Garrett’s current recruit, or at least current before his turn, Tripplett is being withheld due to his affiliation with Garrett. And on top of all this, S.H.I.E.L.D. Itself is in question as it is unknown what facilities are held by Hydra and what are held by those loyal to Nick Fury, and the US government is starting to come in, take everyone out of the picture, and ask questions later. To make a long story short (too late), things are continuing to ramp up towards the season finale and I’m enjoying most every minute of it.
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Sparks
Sparks 2014
This is a movie that completely escaped my attention as it made the festival rounds last year and it even played near me in Chicago last April, but I did notice it when it came out on DVD as it appeared at my local Wal-Mart. Since it was a lower budget indie movie I had to look farther into it and contacted the writer/director and got to interview William Katt who is the executive producer and plays the main villain in the movie Matanza which you can view here. But aside from that, it is another different take on the superhero movie. It’s a film noir thriller set in the 20’s & 40’s following the story of Ian Sparks and his descent into the underbelly of the superhero culture. There’s plenty of twists and turns and things don’t turn out quite the way one might expect. It has a bit of a slow start, but once the action starts happening it goes on right through the end.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 